In 2008, the official dropout rate in Alexandria City schools leapt from 3 percent to 11 percent. In neighboring Arlington, it jumped from 2 percent to 9 percent. Fairfax saw its rate bump up to nearly 6 percent, from less than 2 percent one year earlier.
The reason for the changes were not sudden shifts in student behavior, but a change in how Virginia schools tracked students, and therefore how they calculated rates. And by all accounts, the newer, higher rate is much more accurate.
By 2012, Maryland will have instituted a similar tracking system. Students will have a unique identifying number that will travel with them from school to school. And if they start high school one place and then quit before graduation, without showing up somewhere else, they’ll be counted as dropouts. In the past, before such data tracking was possible, dropout rates were a shaky estimation.
Currently, Maryland districts have dropout rates similar to past rates in Virginia schools. In Montgomery, the rate was 3 percent in 2009, despite a graduation rate of only 87 percent. In Prince George’s, the dropout rate was even less — just over 1 percent — despite an 85 percent graduation rate. In both jurisdictions and across the state, officials expect dropout figures to rise.
But the initial pain of uglier numbers will be worth bearing, said George Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education.
“It’s higher, but more accurate,” he said, which can lead to policies and programs better tailored to students most in need of help.
The biggest policy shift in Virginia has been a decision by the state board to hold schools accountable for the numbers, now that it’s no longer an estimation, Pyle said.
“High schools will no longer be accredited based on how well the students who happen to be there do on state tests, but also on the schools’ success in keeping all students on track to a diploma.”
Why they quit: Student dropouts, grades 7-12 (Data kept by Maryland State Department of Education. Virginia does not keep comparable data.)
